Can We Stop Trying To ‘Catch Out’ Women For Lying About Their Age?

Last week, Jezebel ran a story with the headline “No Offence To Anyone But Margot Robbie Is Not 25“, in the best use of “no offence” since the school bully commented on your formal dress in Year 11. The crux of the story is that Robbie — who is on the cover of American Vogue next month: a huge coup for an actress of her status — must be lying about her age because in 2008, the Sydney Morning Herald said she was 23.

The writer, Bobby Finger, claims he’s investigating this issue as Margot Robbie’s age has been “the subject of the internet’s fascination for several years”. He cites a recent tweet from his former co-worker as proof. (Meanwhile, I spend a lot of time on the internet, and I have never stumbled upon this conspiracy theory).

.@NYTimes correction: margot robbie is not 25https://t.co/vowaMvuLbe

— Allie Jones (@allierileyjones) April 28, 2016

The piece goes on to say that the fact that Margot Robbie is probably lying about her age doesn’t make the writer angry, as it’s just “a symptom of our youth-obsessed culture [given] how hard it is for women in Hollywood to get acting work as they age out of their twenties”. But… why would it make anyone angry in the first place?

Margot Robbie made a name for herself on the world stage in 2013’s The Wolf Of Wall Street, and this year she’s pretty much dominated every Suicide Squad trailer to come out thus far (it’s also been announced that she’ll star as Harley Quinn again in an upcoming “top secret” DC project). If Robbie is now in a position where people feel comfortable attempting to make her seem silly and vain by accusing her of lying about her age, then woah, she really has made it in Hollywood!

This isn’t the first time that a famous woman’s age has been questioned. Tabloid media continually tries to unearth the truth behind these deceptive starlets. Rumours about Lorde’s ‘real’ age have been rife for years (for the record, she’s 19 not 40). Jessica Chastain straight-up refuses to tell people how old she is because she knows it’ll limit her roles. Sandra Bullock once told Barbara Walters that she’s not even sure how old she is anymore because she’s lied about it in the past. Last year Woman’s Day claimed that Rebel Wilson was lying about her age, her name and maybe even her entire identity (Jezebel followed this up by asking if Rebel Wilson was “39, 35, or a 36-year-old liar named Melanie Bownds”).

This week it came out that Rebel Wilson was actually suing Woman’s Day for insinuating she had “lied about her age, name and background, and had fabricated stories from her childhood”.

OMG I'm actually a 100 year old mermaid formerly known as "CC Chalice" ….thanks shady Australian press for your tall poppy syndrome x

— Rebel Wilson (@RebelWilson) May 18, 2015

There’s something about questioning the age of an actress just to make a point about how fickle and sexist Hollywood is, that reeks of hypocrisy. Skewering the industry’s double standards by exposing women to ridicule and embarrassment doesn’t actually fix the issue. Of course it’s sad that women have to lie about their age to get work in the film industry! But highlighting the victims of this pressure (women who are too scared of not being cast because they’re over 30) just reinforces the message that a woman’s age is something to be ashamed of. If you do this, you’re part of the problem.

By the by, if you haven’t seen the Inside Amy Schumer sketch on this topic, ‘Last Fuckable Day’, you should really make it your priority right now.

After all this, Jezebel published a follow-up this week saying that they had made a mistake, and maybe Margot Robbie really was 25 this whole time (of course, it took several personal documents like her high school class photo and school formal pictures provided by a former classmate to confirm this). “The public –myself obviously included — is often fascinated when an actor is revealed to have altered their biography in some way — be it a change of name, age, or birth place,” Finger wrote in the new piece. “We’re equally shocked when they — those people who pretend for a living — are revealed to be pretending about nothing at all.”

Then how about next time, when a question is raised about a female actor’s age, we just decide ‘who cares?’. Or better yet, how about we figure out a way to criticise Hollywood’s sexism without shaming individual actresses?

Now, let’s pretend this never happened and watch this delightful video of Margot Robbie pretending to be Patrick Bateman, shall we? That pearl and glycolic peel makes her look at least 10 years younger.